World Reports

Spyhopping

Toyotas vs. Tortillas

The world is running out of coal, oil, and gas – and we’re running out
of time. Environmentalists used to fret that humanity was fouling its
own nest. Today, as mounting evidence of global warming emerges, it
seems we’ve set our nest aflame.

Some believe that ethanol may
save us from that conflagration. But, as John Muir noted, when you try
to pull on something, you find it’s “hitched to everything else in the
Universe.” Now, thanks to ethanol, we’ve discovered that Toyotas are
hitched to tortillas. Turning corn into ethanol means turning farms
into fueling stations.

The American Dream, long fueled by cheap
fuel and food, is drawing to a close as millions of acres of wheat,
soybeans, and cotton are replaced by fuel-corn plantations. Fifteen
percent of the US corn crop is now dedicated to ethanol production,
according to Food First. At the same time, America has become a net
food importer – with prices rising nearly 10 percent per year. We are
literally consuming the planet to feed our cars. When you remember that
only a fraction of the planet’s people own cars, this means that the
car-owning minority is prepared to starve billions to keep our vehicles
on the road.

Thanks to the plant-fuel frenzy, Indonesia’s
endangered forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations and vast
tracts of the Amazon are being felled for biofuel crops to feed gas
tanks – all this despite the fact that ethanol delivers fewer miles per
gallon than gasoline and still pollutes the air with greenhouse gases.

So
who’s been driving the ethanol bandwagon? The same small group of
profit-driven corporations that helped put the brakes on General
Motors’ EV-1. When GE’s legendary electric vehicle proved to be too
popular and too profitless (no oil to buy, no costly garage repairs
required), Big Oil and Detroit conspired to destroy it. (Note: Who Killed the Electric Car? may bean even more important film than An Inconvenient Truth.)

Anne
Brower, wife of Earth Island Institute founder David Brower, once
observed that we’d never find a way to save the Earth until we found a
cure for “greedlock.” A “New World Is Possible” – but it won’t happen
until the Old Corporate World crumbles.

That’s why an event like Live Earth is more a gesture than a solution. Focusing the attention of
an estimated two billion people in 130 countries was a monumental
accomplishment, but Gore’s “Call to Action” played second fiddle to the
amplified guitars of aging celebrity performers. The sight of millions
of white arms swaying overhead and clapping in unison looked less like
a celebration of the Precautionary Principle than a sign of mass
surrender to the Party Principle. At best, the brief “action alerts”
that garnished the broadcast were a rehash of 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth. At their worst, they included such suggestions as: “Try using fivepaper napkins instead of six.”

A
real Call to Action would have invited all the participants and viewers
to switch to energy-efficient lightbulbs on exactly the same day. The
resulting drop in global energy use would have demonstrated the power
of mass action.

Will more people adopt greener habits because
they come wrapped in the trappings of a rock concert? One despairs when
the alert highlighting the environmental damage of bottled water is
followed by a shot of the drummer for Genesis swigging a plastic bottle
of designer water.

So what’s the solution? The Gospel of the Soft
Path – which calls on us to all walk softly on the Earth – points the
way towards redemption (if not salvation). The solar revolution that
promises to bring a million solar roofs to California could bring cheap
and efficient vertical axis wind-chargers to city roofs, bridges, and
transmission towers. Tidal turbines turned by underwater rotors could
power coastal cities. And there are geothermal heat exchangers, fuel
cells, and the promise of zero-point energy.

But none of this
will come to pass without a fundamental reform of our
consumer/corporate economy. Certainly, it’s important to reduce your
environmental footprint to the point that you’re standing on tippy-toe.
But the real question is not, “What can you do to save the Earth?” The
real challenge lies in the question, “What comforts are you willing to
sacrifice to stop destroying the planet?”

And beyond that lies
another fundamental question: How do we break the grip of profiteering
multinationals that defend greedlock by placing roadblocks on the paths
to change?